Before signing up for the Wicked Fast Poconos PA Marathon, I’d never raced a downhill marathon.

Yes, Boston is technically a net downhill, but with the Newton Hills it’s nowhere near the same as a race with a steady decline from start to finish. I know downhill marathons are controversial, but I wanted to try one. Wicked Fast is point to point with a very slight downhill slope— I originally saw that the course dropped 800 feet, but then I read that it was a net decline of 680 feet. Not actually sure which was correct.

But I took down a 3-year-old marathon PR at last month’s race, beating my 2022 Chicago time by just over a minute. And I freaking loved it!

Getting paced by a caterpillar

Wicked Fast, formerly known as the Jack and Jill Marathon — they also have a sister race in Washington state that has been going on for years — actually held two half marathons and marathons, one on Friday, September 12 for anyone who wanted a last ditch attempt to qualify for Boston 2026, and then one on Saturday, September 13, the first day of the Boston 2027 qualifying window. I signed up for Saturday’s race.

I stayed at Staci’s house and was up bright and early (3:30 am) to make it on time to the bus that would take me from the Lehighton Outdoor Center to the starting line at the Lehigh Gorge State Park. My goal was to run sub 3:25 and I was hoping for a 3:25 pace group, but the fastest was 3:30. So I just decided to line up ahead of them, close to the start line. Just before we began, 4 women connected by a caterpillar costume approached the start, and the race director announced that they were going for a Guinness World Record and were aiming for a 3:20 finish. Definitely not anything I’d ever seen at a marathon before!

The course was simple — 5K out on the D&L Trail, then we turned around and ran straight back down to the finish at the outdoor center. I didn’t notice any downhill until about mile 10, and even then it was very slight. The route was also absolutely gorgeous and we had views of the Lehigh River the whole way. And the weather! Couldn’t have ordered a nicer day!

Two things that made this hard packed gravel trail a little more challenging than expected, though. One, uneven terrain. I almost rolled my ankle around mile 4 on a rocky patch on the trail. Two, running in the mountains really jacked up my Garmin and I pretty much had to run by feel, because the pace it was telling me was not accurate (and only got worse in the later miles!)

Somewhere around mile 7, I caught up to the caterpillar and realized I was going faster than I expected. They were keeping a steady pace and I felt pretty comfortable, so I decided to hang with them as long as I could! These ladies were so fun and I’ll never forget being paced by a caterpillar in a marathon! (Spoiler: They did get their record; it just has to be verified by Guinness!)

Around miles 15 and 16 is when my Garmin really started to shit the bed, at one point saying I was running an average pace of 18 minutes per mile. So I relied on the caterpillar, the mile markers along the trail, my elapsed time and just my own sense of what my marathon pace is. But it was a bit of a mindf*ck.

Wait– I’m going to PR?

I completely spaced out during miles 17-19 and then was legit surprised to spot the mile 20 marker. How the hell were we at mile 20 already? The elapsed time on my watch told me I had been running for 2.5 hours and then it hit me that if I just kept running my current pace, I could finish under 3:20…. And maybe even PR!

I pulled ahead of the caterpillar around then and the next few miles were kind of a blur, as the later miles in a marathon usually are. The course flattened out and we passed by the town of Jim Thorpe, where there were more people around cheering us on. My watch was still going bananas and I’m sure the trees lining the trail didn’t help. At mile 24ish, I saw Kristen, whom I had met in the spring at the Spring Ahead Half near Philly. She had been one of the pacers for the half marathon, and she was running some extra miles so she joined me until almost the end of the race.

The end had a surprise (to me anyway) overpass before we made the final turn toward the finish. That was mean! About 800 meters from the finish, another woman, Aimee (I stalked her online pretty quickly after and we became Instagram friends) came up behind me. As we approached the finish line, the announcer called out “we have a fight to the finish!” We both were running as hard as we could and she outkicked me by 7 seconds. We finished as 2nd and 3rd female respectively and both PR’d!

Official time was 3:17:41, a BQ with almost 27 minutes of cushion for 2027 (since I’m 45!)

The downhill factor

As I mentioned before, I didn’t notice any downhill until about mile 10, and even then it was very minimal. Did it give me extra speed? Probably, but the hard packed gravel terrain was more difficult for me than running on pavement, so that might have canceled out any benefits I got.

My previous PR was 3:18:46 from the 2022 Chicago Marathon, a pancake flat course. I also ran 3:19:53 in Boston in 2023. I think I was in similar shape for those races. My A10 time this year was almost identical to my A10 time in the weeks leading up to Chicago in 2022, so again I think my fitness was comparable.

Regardless, I worked hard, had fun, and am happy with the result. I highly recommend the Wicked Fast PA marathon if you’re on the East Coast and looking to try a downhill marathon (that adheres to Boston’s new restrictions on downhill marathons!)

What’s next?

I am also running the Atlantic City Marathon in 11 days with BibRave! I was so back and forth on this race. First, I was planning to run the half and train to run a fast half (low 1:30s/maybe even sub 90 again.) Then I signed up for Wicked Fast and decided to focus on marathon training instead of half training. And THEN I decided what the hell, let’s just run two marathons this fall. When I ran Philly six weeks after the Chicago Marathon, I ended up having so much fun and running even faster than expected. So I am hoping for similar vibes in AC!